Mama to two little boys, Lilo (3 and a half years) and Ju (5 years), I blog about our crafting, baking and general activities.

Friday, 28 December 2012

Activities around The Snowman

Ahhh! Christmas is over, we have finished all the activities on our garland, and there is no need to count down any more. We are already missing opening the advent calendars' windows, making tree ornaments, the smell of spices in the kitchen and the general anticipatory mood. Hopefully, you have all had an amazing Christmas and have got to the other side all cheered and happy. As for us, we are back in our home and the tree is still standing with all its decorations, although the branches are starting to look a little floppy.

On Christmas day, we watched The Snowman and the Snowdog, the sequel to the wordless 1982 film adaptation of Raymond Briggs' classic on television. This year marks the 30th anniversary of The Snowman, which has been shown every year on Channel 4 at Christmas since 1982. Ju's grandfather kindly gave him The Snowman book and CD set for Christmas. What more could we need to busy ourselves around The Snowman today? Just because Christmas has been and gone, it surely doesn't mean Christmas crafting stops here.

After watching the episode of The Snowman and the Snowdog again on Channel 4OD, the boys had a snowman lunch, consisting of a toasted bagel spread with cream cheese and decorated with blueberries for the mouth and eyes and a slice of carrot for the nose.

Then we made some snowmen rice crispies cakes, using up the last of our marshmallows and some leftover sweeties to decorate. The boys enjoyed eating those for dessert.
We used:
- 160 g rice crispies
- 65 g butter
- 260 g marshmallows
We melted the butter in a saucepan, then added the marshmallows, stirring for about 10 minutes on a low heat until everything was melted and smooth. Then we mixed in the rice crispies.

We waited for the mix to cool slightly and then made balls for the head and body.

Then we got decorating with small sweets and chocolate stars for buttons, eyes and noses, liquorice all sorts for hats, and jelly snakes for the scarves.

After lunch, we re-read the story of The Snowman and then got onto The Snowman's website, where we found instructions and a printable template to make a mobile. The mobile was simple enough to make, using glue, ribbon, sellotape and scissors. Ju stuck the sellotape and cut the ribbon.

We hung the finished mobile in his room. Ju particularly enjoyed prodding the characters with his new pirate foam sword to make them move.

If you are looking for more snowmen-related activities, check out the sock snowmen we made on Day 12 and the mozzarella snowmen which were part of our Christmas feast on Day 9. Time for us to go and listen to Walking in the Air our Snowman CD now...

Nice way of spending a holiday! I wanna try that with my kids too when we take our holiday at UK. We'll be staying at a self catering holiday home from Holiday Cottages. Wishing you great moments to come!